Noel's 2007 pumpkins

Another year in the news: 2007 was another
crazy year for pumpkin carving. The local paper
did another article on my pumpkins - the bad thing about this was that I
told them everything I was going to carve. We got behind on our carving,
but still felt obligated to get everything in. This led to us getting
virtually no sleep heading toward the big day, but at least we got everything
done! My wife Nam helped out FAR more than she intended to, and ended up
having to take over carving duties for a number of pumpkins I had intended to
carve. We had a number of different early and late mob scenes in our yard. Everyone had their favorites,
but like last year, the Death Star probably won out, followed by the Maleficent Dragon
(every year I HAVE to do a good sized dragon pumpkin),
and then a tie for third involving Mickey and the Moon Fairy.

Free Pumpkin Carving Patterns: I made patterns for many (but not all)
of the pumpkins I carved. For those other than Disney Patterns, I have
posted them below with the picture. Feel free to use these for your
pumpkin carving. As long as you aren't using them for mass production, I
have no problem with you using the pattern to sell the pumpkins. But if
you do use the patterns to sell pumpkins on Ebay or another website, please give
me credit for the pattern, along with a link here. Because Disney
sues people who put their pumpkin patterns online, I can't post the Disney
patterns I created here.

To bring up the large pictures, just click on the thumbnail
and then use the "back" button to return.

Homage to Sleeping Beauty

This year's dragon
is Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty. This is the scene where she turns into
a dragon and fights Prince Philip has always been a favorite of mine.
This was carved on an 88 pound pumpkin, and took just over 12 hours to
carve. The trees alone took almost 6 hours.

In doing the homage, I started
off with my Maleficent sorceress pattern I did last year, but this time
carved to a fake pumpkin. To the right of this is the screencap used
for the above pumpkin. The pattern was a bear to create, as all the
colors are similar hues of grays and purples.

The
bramble-covered castle is on the right side of the dragon pumpkin - here's a
view of the castle in happy times , and then Sleeping Beauty herself,
Princess Aurora (both carved by my wife, Nam).

Mars Attacks Sculpture

Doing pumpkin sculptures are
very different from carving patterns. They involve a 3D perspective,
that is often LOTS harder to actually carve. In preparation for doing
a Darth Vader sculpture, I decided to try my hand at doing a sculpture of an
alien from the movie Mars Attacks. My goal was to make the sculpture
work both in the day time and with a candle inside. I don't know that it
came out so good, but really, how bad can you mess up brain matter? I
got lots of "ooohs" and "aaaahs" for this one. Others decided it was just
too disgusting to look at.

The Star Wars Sculptures: The Death Star & Darth Vader

The Death Star was such a hit
last year, that I couldn't not do it this year. Similar to last year,
it was the hit of the show. I wasn't as happy with it though, as I
only had 5-6 hours to carve it prior to the big show - I needed more like 8. Worse,
I couldn't take a picture till the crowds died down - by that point the
laser hold had dried and cut a little bit.
This was done on a 77 pound pumpkin.

I'm just starting to learn how
to "sculpt" pumpkins. For this one, I bought a Halloween Darth Vader
mask, set it beside my pumpkin and started carving. It took forever,
but I'm pretty happy at how it turned out.

The Goth Chicks...

Luis Royo is definitely one of my favorite
fantasy artists. This is a pumpkin of his Evolution sculpture.
Unfortunately, this pumpkin also had a penchant for trying to commit
suicide. It finally succeeded.

Magic and Fantasy

Diablo II is one of my all
time favorite games. I decided to do a pattern of the game cover, but
used Brom's original painting for skeleton pattern I carved instead of the modified
game cover. I also made a simpler pattern (see to the right) that
matches the actual game cover.

I've carved Ciruelo
Cabral's Draco twice before. This is by far my most successful pattern, as
over 20 people around the internet have posted pictures of their carvings of
this pattern. Here I've done it to a fake pumpkin.

Fantasia's Sorcerer's
Apprentice is one of my all-time favorite animated scenes. Chernabog, the
demon in Fantasia is also a favorite of mine. I sort of like Chernabog
looking afraid of the Broom guy! This was carved on an 85 pound pumpkin.

A guy named Sage created this
pattern wonderful Moonfairy pattern from
Jessica Galbreth's painting of the same name. It's absolutely
gorgeous, and was definitely a hit this year.

The Fairy went right next to a cut-through of the Horned King from the Disney
movie, the Black Cauldron.

This dragon eye (pattern
by a guy named Paul) from the inside of the Eragon book also went over well.
I originally intended to carve both of the eyes, but this one took me a full
10 hours to carve! I really end up taking too much time on these.

Nam carved Optimus Prime.
Unfortunately, in our mad rush to get done, I didn't have time to take a
picture of it, and forgot too on Halloween night. So if it looks
slightly degraded, its because the picture is from the second night.

Justin and Sarah's pumpkins

Justin (14) did his first
complicated pattern this year, King Tut. He also did a great Bender
cut-through, and Luigi from the Mario Brothers games.

Sarah really kicked it up a
notch from last year, and did Boo from Super Mario Party game, and the Lake
Erie Monster (pattern created by Jamie, who lives in Ohio).

Sarah really kicked it up a
notch from last year, and did Boo from Super Mario Party game, and the Lake
Erie Monster (pattern created by Jamie, who lives in Ohio).

Sarah also colored some
"Window-Kins" which we put on our windows for the big event.

Corporate Pumpkin Carving

I do some work with
Automation Technologies. They
recently opened a new HQ facility, and had an open house to celebrate it.
I made a carving of their corporate logo as a house warming gift.

The Overall Display

Here's a few shots of the overall display - 25
pumpkins in all. It was hard to get them all in one picture. We had
good crowds this year with early rushes from folks in the neighborhood,
followed by lots of cars driving up to see. We even ended up with a
few traffic jams!